Raveling

I read this book when it first was published in 2000, and was so riveted from the first page I missed my subway stop and came to somewhere in Queens. Rereading it, the same thing happened (only I wasn't on the subway) - it felt like getting drunk, or falling in love. Just - wow!

The narration is amazing, but unusual. The first person narrator actually says he's omniscient, and he often describes events he can't possibly have witnessed, sometimes even assuming his brother's voice. It's hard to tell, also, how much to believe, given the narrator is hospitalized early on in the story, diagnosed as schizophrenic. It doesn't add to his credibility that, when he was nine years old and his younger sister disappeared without a trace, that he show more spent a certain amount of time not speaking, but crawling around on his hands and knees, a growling "wolfboy." This disturbed kid, now an adult, insists his brother killed his sister, even after the meds start to calm his delusional state and he stops hearing the light fixtures talking to him. His psychologist (who needs therapy badly herself) wonders about his claims and begins to piece together what really happened to the little girl whose disappearance years ago caused this family to unravel.

Some of it's pretty brutal, much of it is wrenchingly sad, a lot of it is surprisingly funny, and all of it is brilliantly, beautifully written. One of the most original, most involving stories I've ever read. show less

Truly unusual literary psychological suspense. Pilot Airie has been hospitalized for a psychotic episode that kept him catatonic in the woods for 3 days. As he begins to get better, he seems to remember that his neurosurgeon brother killed their sister many years before, though her disappearance is unsolved. Pilot seems to be omniscient, leading to an unusual combination of 1st and 3rd person perspectives.